Jim Taylor's Columns - 'Soft Edges' and 'Sharp Edges'

There have been more mass shootings in the U.S. so far this year than days in the year. CBS News predicts the U.S. will end 2019 having averaged at least one mass shooting every single day.

It makes reporting fairly easy. Reporters can simply fill in the blanks: “Today in (name of city) a gunman opened fire in (name of church, store, mosque, or synagogue) with a (make or model of gun) killing (number dead), and injuring (number hospitalized) before being shot and killed by police.”

In the wake of the latest mass shooting -- Which one? Does it matter? -- the TV program Fox and Friends called in a pastor to explain what was going wrong with the nation.

Former police officer Tony Perkins, a Southern Baptist minister who heads an organization called the Family Research Council, blamed the rash of mass murders on the teaching of science -- particularly evolution -- in American schools.

He said, “We've taught our kids that they come about by chance through primordial slime and then we're surprised that they treat their fellow Americans like dirt."

We made an odd couple, strolling down Toronto’s Yonge Street that hot summer evening. We chatted animatedly about Wittgenstein and Nietzsche, Hemingway and Atwood. We paused occasionally to observe the scantily clad bodies strolling along Yonge Street’s sidewalks. I admired the women; he, the men. He was gay. He posed no threat to me, nor I to him. Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old U.S.-born citizen of Afghan descent, didn’t share our tolerance. A week ago, he invaded a gay night club in Orlando, Florida, and started shooting.